The Reality Of Prison

How do you imagine the reality of prison? Imagine that you have spent the last ten or so years behind bars. What do you imagine you would feel? What is your life really like? What is it that you miss the most? What is it that you hate the most about being in prison? What is the emotional impact of the experience as a whole?

Most people can not imagine the reality of being in prison. The thought of being in prison never crosses their mind, and, likely, never will. Of course, people believe that they have an “idea’ of what it might be like. This “idea” is built from a mix of Hollywood portrayals and reality television. However, Hollywood strips the experience of most of the truth and fabricates action and plots that make it more exciting than it really is. Reality television or documentaries cover only the real action, exaggerating it to seem like riots and stabbings occur on a daily basis. I have yet to watch anything on television or read anything in a book or magazine that accurately depicts the prison experience on a real and personal basis.

So what is it really like? The answer depends on whether you are a true criminal; a person who exhibits anti-social behavior in every aspect of their lives and a thought pattern that leads to negative actions and consequences without any real caring, exhibiting a maturity level comparable to that of a young child; or a “normal” person; one who values family and freedom, has a care for the rights and feelings of others, respects the manners and morals possessed by most of society, and grasps the concept of rules and why they are important.

For a true criminal, the lack of guilt and the inability to sympathize and empathize with others prohibits them from understanding the effect their actions have on others, Their narcissism prevents them from caring. They are able to accept prison as part of their normal life because they are able to see it as an inevitable result of their conduct. While they are in prison, they spend the majority of their time playing card games, laughing and joking with other like-minded individuals. They tell their “war stories” and take pride in their criminality. The reality of prison for them is just a continuation of the life that they lived outside of prison, without the “perks.”

True criminals believe that the world is centered around them. Their family and friends are believed to be obligated to take care of them while they are incarcerated. The have no care for rehabilitation in any sense of the term and put on a show when it is time to show they are a changed man. They constantly complain about “the system” because they feel they are being treated unjustly and unfairly when they are not being catered to. It is the ultimate “me against the world” mentality. Prison is just another place to them, holding no special meaning.

I know. I used to fit right in with them.

For a normal person, prison is very different. It is not the loss of freedom that affects a normal person. It is all of the little things that are experienced because of a lengthy prison sentence that hold meaning. It is all of these small things that are never thought of by anyone until they are pit in the situation to experience it. It is all of the things that are taken for granted outside of the cage.

In the beginning, the emotions are a gamut of negativity. Guilt, heartache, anger, sadness and fear overwhelm you to the point of agony. The sum of these emotions is so great it totally consumes you. However, these emotions are only the beginning of the hell that you are about to face. They barely scratch the surface and are the product of the shock of what led you to the situation in which you find yourself.

When you first come to prison, you find that it is not at all what you thought it would be. After the shock wears off, you fall into the typical routine: eat, sleep, and recreate. You will find that you do not really “fit in” with those around you. You begin to shun the normal activities everyone else participates in, avoiding conversation and contact with other inmates. Being around most other inmates makes you feel uncomfortable. You start looking down on the people around you because you disagree with the lifestyle they lead and feel as if you are a better person than they are.

Yet even this is tolerable.

What makes being in prison hard to cope with for a normal person are the moods that you find yourself in due to the things outside of prison that affect your emotions. A year or two into your sentence, your friends start to disappear. At first, you received mail every day from everybody. Now, however, you do not get as much mails as you used to. You start to feel as if time has stopped for you when you were sent to prison, but has continued on for those on the outside—a feeling that never leaves. You tire of the routine and look for something constructive to fill your time with be it work-related or education; anything that keeps your mind from getting dull and takes it off the fact that you are in prison.

After about five years, you find out who your friends really are. Maybe one or two still write or visit, everyone else has moved on in their lives without you. Even the majority of your family no longer writes on a consistent basis, if at all. You immerse yourself in school or work to keep from sinking into a depression. You feel forgotten and forsaken. The loneliness of not being able to have physical contact with those you love is all but unbearable.

This is also about the time you realize that you do need to change some of your ways after seeing yourself reflected in your peers. You go to the rehabilitative programs, which rarely teach you anything or show you something about yourself that you don’t already know. You figure out that that these programs do not have much to offer you and you are on your own when it comes to fixing the problems that you see in yourself. This is a long road, but it is the necessity of it that drives you to take it.

After about ten years, there is nothing left to focus on but prison. The routine is set and even transferring to another prison doesn’t change it. There aren’t any more educational opportunities to take advantage of. You really loathe the people you are forced to be around 24 hours a day. Your focus shifts to internal thoughts.

The internal thoughts dictate the emotions and moods so deep into a lengthy sentence. All memories, good or bad, do nothing but bring pain. Writing to the one or two people that you are still in contact with becomes an arduous task because you have nothing to say that isn’t related to the negativity of your experience. Thinking about getting out scares you. Thinking what your life will be like when you get out seems like nothing more than a fantasy. Thinking about what your life could have been makes you cry. Thinking about your life as it is makes you depressed and angry.

For a normal person, it impossible to avoid depression in prison. Ever day becomes misery, and is reflected in everything you say and do. You feel totally empty and unfulfilled. There is nothing to fill that void except hope and even that is weak. You seem emptiness of mind and escape from your prison outside and in. For a normal person, prison is the embodiment of misery on a level that can not be described, only experienced.

This is what makes prison life hard to cope with for a non-criminal. This is the true penalty for losing control and committing a violent crime. This is the justice of the justice system. The loss of individual freedom is small in comparison.

As for me, I fight the depression and loneliness on a daily basis. I struggle to mate the “What could have been” with the “What could be” and the “What I want,” every day--for that is the source of the strength I need to cope with my life as it is.

Imagine that.

Stripped Bare By Beauty

For those who know me personally, it is no secret that I am a pretty dour individual, prone to bad moods, cynicism, and overall melancholy. Given my experiences in my nearly thirty years of life, over half of which I have spent incarcerated, I believe this is acceptable; the sun doesn’t shine at night.

Over the years, I have learned to find inspiration in the darkness that dominates my life and the negativity of the world in which I live. My writing and music reflect this, being filled with subject matter like drug use, suicide, violence, hate, anger and references to demons, evil, and other things that show a disdain for life. Like Poe, the ugliness in life is often my muse.

These images, however, compose only a small part of my being even though they dominate my exterior world. I do see the beauty in life, though my standard of beauty is hard to meet. Usually I find it only exhibited in the innocence of childhood, the subtleties that express the love of family and friendship, and the rawness of undefiled nature. Rarely do things that are created by man make the grade. When I do see beauty, I am never inspired by it, preferring to simply admire the awesomeness of its power.

Almost nobody has ever seen this in me, even the rare person who has seen me stripped of the many masks I wear. Since I have been incarcerated for most of my life, to witness this is near impossible. With that in mind, I will share with you the most recent event that elicited such a response in me.

I am an avid fan of figure skating and ice dancing and have been since I was a child. I prefer women’s figure skating and pairs dancing over the male side of the sport, but only because the male side is almost comically acrobatic. For me, the sport is about beauty, emotion, and performance, as opposed to structured athleticism.

Two skaters in this year’s Olympic Women’s Figure Skating Championship left me tearfully stunned by their performances during the competition. The first skater, Canadian Bronze Medalist Joannie Rochette, is an emotional story. Two days prior to her short-program performance, her mother died of a massive heart attack. In spite of her heartbreaking loss, she took the ice and gave a miraculous performance, leaving her in a quite unexpected third place. It was her free skate performance, however, that was truly amazing.

Though one of the elite skaters in the world, Ms. Rochette is not considered to be one of the best, especially when compared to the top two ranked performers, who are far and above the rest of the competition. Her free skate did not reflect this. As emotional and well skated as her short program was, her free skate was, by far, the best performance of her life, leaving her only 2.5 points shy of a silver medal. This was overshadowed by the emotion expressed in her performance and the beauty of her spiral sequence. Though technically on point, the way that you could read her love for her mother and see her reflecting on the life they shared together in her eyes, as well as knowing her story and the courage it took to compete left me, and the commentators, speechless. I have never experienced such a thing in my life. It was simply beautifully wonderful.

The second skater, Kim Yun-Na, the gold medalist from the Republic of Korea, also brought me to tears in both her short program and free skate performances. Both were near perfect technically, and the most difficult in element ever attempted, earning her the highest score ever recorded by an amazing 18 points. This fact in itself is awe-inspiring.

The beauty of her performances was unrivaled by anything I have ever seen. The choreography, the lines of Kim Yun-Ya’s body as she performed the elements of the program, the technical precision of the jumps, the grace and flow of her movements, the music she skated to, and her genuine expressions all combined to become the most beautiful man-made creation I have ever witnessed. The individual nature of the performance, the active nature of the sport, and the personal element of the moment made it an experience that can never be repeated or experienced in the same way again. It, too, was wonderfully beautiful.

The story behind Joannie Rochette’s performance and what it aided her in accomplishing was what made her achievement so beautiful and meaningful. Whereas it was the elements themselves and the way they were performed that put the beauty in Kim Yun-Na’s performance. Both amazed me and inspired me enough to write about my experience. Most of all, they allowed me to move a bit further away from the negativity that dominates my exterior and have given me the opportunity to share a part of myself that few realize I possess.

Ugliness may be my muse, but true beauty is my savior.